Dell starts selling $9,900 overclocked gaming PC

Dell today starts taking orders for its "limited edition" XPS 600 Renegade quad SLI, physics engine-equipped desktop gaming rig. The kit will set you back a whopping $9,930, although this includes Dell's 30in LCD monitor.

The XPS 600 Renegade comes in a custom-painted case inside which sit four GeForce 7900 GPUs each with 512MB of video memory ready to run games at 2,560 x 1,600. The unit also features an Ageia PhysX processor on which games can offload all their complex physics calculations to free up the CPU - a dual-core Pentium D Extreme Edition "factory overclocked" to 4.26GHz, no less - for stuff like artificial intelligence work.

Dell has put a SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty sound card in the box, which also houses a Western Digital 160GB, 10,000rpm Raptor hard drive and - in case you run out of room - a second WD HDD, a 400GB, 7,200rpm job. There's 2GB of dual-channel 667MHz DDR 2 connected to the CPU via an Nvidia nForce 4 SLI chipset.

All this, plus the 30in 3007WFP monitor, comes to $9,930, but Dell has a range of lesser specced machines for gamers on a tighter budget. And it is offering the Ageia physics controller on its regular XPS 600 and XPS 400 desktops in versions priced at $2,039 and $1,239, respectively.

At time of writing the machine had yet to appear as a purchase option on its US website. ®